The covid-19 pandemic suddenly changed the lives of millions of people worldwide. Organizations throughout the globe had to face new working environments with employees shifting away from onsite work to home office. With this in mind, the following research question was formulated: What impact has home office and remote work had on work performance and work life balance during the coronavirus pandemic 2020- 2021 - the case of development professionals working at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) A literature review as well as a qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with respondents from UNIDO were conducted. Interview findings were looked at through the lens of Bruno Latour’s and Michael Callon’s Actor Network Theory (ANT). The ANT framework helped to understand how various actors (new work arrangements, no travel, virtual meetings and new ICTs) affected other network-actors in the organization (managers, staff, groups at Headquarters and in the field). The thesis concludes that this unprecedented situation had significantly impacted the performance of individuals and organizations as a whole. It also fundamentally changed the way people work, how they communicate and how they cope with work-life balance. It became evident that the support of staff and their attitudes is key to the successful change in the organizational work environment. As many organizations physically return to work, it will become necessary to renegotiate a new office reality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-54706 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Hribernigg, Katharina |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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